


choose wisely

by supersonica



Series: kisses are a far better fate than wisdom [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, February Kiss Prompt, First Kiss, Kissing in the Rain, Nonbinary Character, Other, caleb's brain is Not A Fun Place, mention of typical caleb feelings of I Don't Deserve This tho so fair warning, molly uses he/him, no mention of character death at all, passing mention of the bardits, this was supposed to be cute and turned into a character study, wild and vague speculation on the dodecahedron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-20 21:04:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17629658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supersonica/pseuds/supersonica
Summary: “Time travel sounds rather fascinating, actually.”Well, shit.Caleb looked to the road ahead, refusing to meet Molly’s eyes. “It isn’t—it’s not just that. There are many possible uses for—”“—cut the crap, Caleb, Nott told me what you’re trying to do.”





	choose wisely

**Author's Note:**

> not to be That Bitch but I wrote this instead of both the wips I'm allegedly supposed to be writing because the February Kiss Prompt list is just too good to pass up
> 
> 1\. kiss in the rain & 2\. first kiss

01 (kiss in the rain/first kiss)

 

He was close.

He was  _ so  _ close.

The beacon had been in the group’s possession for years by now, had travelled with them from the sewers of Zadash to every corner of Exandria. Every new adventure seemed to uncover new secret powers or new ways it could be used to their advantage. 

Of course, it had brought them into greater danger than any of the Mighty Nein could have expected when they first encountered the object, but with that danger came intrigues and answers and more excitement than anyone could have imagined. 

Caleb had been the first to study the beacon, all that time ago, and though it had usually remained wrapped in lead in Jester’s haversack, he never stopped looking for answers in its glowing grey depths. Answers to many things; to problems they faced, to worries deep set in the back of his mind, to the growing need for power that he felt as the party faced greater and greater dangers. 

Beyond that, answers to the question that he’d made it his life’s mission to solve:

_ Can a mortal man turn back time? _

And for the first time in a very long while, it seemed the answer might be  _ yes _ .

 

x

 

There were muffled voices coming from the other side of the door. They’d been there for quite a while, though Caleb hadn’t, admittedly, been paying an awful lot of attention, but some kind of argument had apparently broken out, and now the voices were raised.

Raising his head from where it had rested on a rickety old desk, Caleb blinked blearily a few times and looked towards the locked door. The room he was in was tiny, far smaller than anything the Mighty Nein usually stayed in these days, but after losing the ivory door needed for their usual Magnificent Mansion in an ambush by some very talented bard-bandits, Caleb had informed the group that unfortunately, they would have to rent rooms at the local inn for a few days until he could go and find another magic-grade door.

_ “Ooh, this will be so fun!” said Jester, the only person who seemed excited about their temporary living situation. “It’ll be just like when we were poor, remember?” _

_ Fjord raised an eyebrow at her. “Jester, were you ever poor?” _

_ “Sure I was, I had to sleep in all those dodgy inns with you guys, didn’t I? I wouldn’t have done that if I’d been rich.” _

_ “Gee, Jester,” Beau snorted, “glad to know you sacrificed so much for us.” _

That had been three weeks ago.

Caleb shook his head, willing the memory away and concentrating harder on the voices on the other side of the door. 

He could definitely hear Nott, her voice still a little scratchy as she continued adjusting to her new halfing body  _ (at least you did one thing right) _ , and the loud, brash tones of Beauregard Lionette would have been easy to place from the other side of town. 

“Look,” Nott was saying, “I’m sure he’s very busy doing important wizard things, and we really should leave him alone.”

Beau groaned. “I’m not saying he’s not super busy and all that but one, we really need some of those rooms back, like, I need to train and so does Jes and Yasha. And  _ two _ , your boy has been in there for weeks, Nott, he needs some sun.”

“I don’t know why you sports people are so hung up on sun, anyway, Caleb just goes red when he’s in it too long. That looks the  _ opposite  _ of healthy if you ask—”

“—conveniently, I’m not asking you, I’m  _ saying  _ that Caleb needs to get out of that fuckin’ room and breathe some, like, outside air, but he’s not going to do it if  _ I  _ ask him, so you need to get in there and mother him into leaving his den.”

“You know  _ what _ —”

Caleb sighed as the argument continued, turning his attention back to kneading the sleep from his overworked eyes. Beau was probably right, he  _ should  _ get out of his little broom closet. It may even do him good to see his friends again, but— 

No, he couldn’t think about them.    

Thinking about his friends would cause him to want to go see them, and seeing them would make him remember how much he liked spending time with them, which would distract him from his work. Caleb loved the Nein, he really did, but he had a responsibility, and a duty, and an obligation to put right what he’d done wrong as a child. And they might not understand, but that was okay. And he might not want to leave them, he might have spent the last three weeks with a sinking pit growing in his stomach as he realised the truth of what would happen at the end of this process, but this wasn’t something Caleb had a choice in. 

He’d spent the past eight years, ever since he got out of the asylum, focussed almost exclusively on this one goal, this one way he could finally,  _ finally,  _ be forgiven, and Caleb wasn’t about to let his own selfish desires get in the way of forgiveness.

And his selfish desires were certainly powerful, oh yes. Caleb hoarded his wants and weaknesses, trying to lock them away from where his conscious mind could dwell on them and distract them. 

Beau might occasionally accuse Caleb of being an automaton (which he could understand, though he hadn’t thought it  _ that  _ funny when she’d stolen his biography of Taryon Darrington and written ‘lol it you’ next to every illustration of Doty) but if she could see even half of the selfish little daydreams and memories that floated around Caleb’s brain, well. 

_ Sunday hangover breakfast in the Mansion and Fjord’s never-ending attempts to recreate Vandren’s exact hair-of-the-dog recipe—quiet afternoons with Nott in the back of the cart, letting her braid his hair—Beau taking him to the Cobalt Vault—watching Molly give tarot readings that always ended happily—listening to Jester’s stories about vandalising temples, breathless with laughter—family dinners with Nott and Yeza, showing Luke how good his mother is at magic—Molly’s hand over his eyes as he presented him with a book—stargazing with Yasha in Xhorhas—Molly asking him how to waltz—“Mister Caleb?” “Mister Mollymauk”—playing an old Zemnian tune on the inn’s piano, looking up at Molly’s unbearably soft smile—   _

Shit.

Caleb couldn’t let any of those things, any of those people, become more important than his goals, than his mission. His  _ purpose _ . He deserved only to live in pursuit of this—this  _ experiment. _ He didn’t deserve anything more, though every passing day made the desire to stay more and more powerful and— 

No. 

A horrible, tiny, voice in the back of his head, a voice with an old Rexxentrum accent and the cadence exclusive to the strictest of teachers, liked reminding Caleb that magical experimentation was his only purpose. It loved telling him how good he was at following missions. How good he was at doing what was needed, and only what was needed.

How bad he was at choosing between what he wanted and what he deserved.

Caleb blinked again, trying to ignore the argument battering at the inside of his skull in addition to the one outside his door, and return to the notes in front of him. It worked, for a few seconds, until a new voice joined Nott and Beau’s, and Caleb gave up any pretence of actually reading what he’d written.

“Are you two still arguing about who gets to take Caleb for a walk?” Molly asked, drawing out his vowels the way he only did when he was trying not to smile. Caleb hated himself for knowing that, and hated himself more for wanting to see it.

Beau huffed a sigh. “Well if it’s so easy,  _ you  _ ask him, Molly. I swear to god it’s like pulling teeth trying to get than man outside and the only person who  _ could _ get him to—” Caleb assumed Beau was levelling a pointed look at Nott “—doesn’t want to pressure her boy.”

Molly wheezed as, presumably, Nott opened her mouth again to argue, but was cut off when their blood hunter said, “Alrighty then, step aside, Beau,” before knocking, loudly, on Caleb’s door.

Not necessarily wanting everyone to know he’d been listening, Caleb pretended to groan as if woken from sleep. 

“ _ Ja? _ ”

“It’s me, Caleb. I was just going out to the shops and was wondering if you’d like to come with? My sources tell me the bookstore is getting a new shipment in today and I figured you might be interested and, well, I always like a bit of company when I’m book-browsing, and… and we haven’t had a chat in so long!”

It must truly be a bad sign, Caleb thought, that he could hear Molly bullshitting him so blatantly and have to fight the urge to smile. He wasn’t sure if, in the three years they’d been travelling together, Molly had  _ ever  _ decided to go book-browsing, let alone done so with enough frequency to develop insider contacts in the publishing industry. 

Unfortunately, with Caleb’s brain still so loose and unfocused from sleep, and his growing compulsion to throw all his research notes into the sea, there was very little Caleb could do to resist responding, “Okay, let me get my coat on.”

Molly didn’t quite keep the surprise out of his voice as he called back, “Uh, don’t worry about a coat, darling, it’s warm and sunny as can be.”

Caleb rolled his eyes as he tied the laces on his boots, trying to force the corners of his mouth to turn down, before throwing on his coat anyway. It took him a minute or so to undo all the wards placed around his doorframe, but when he finally opened it he was greeted with an armful of purple tiefling. Caleb had just enough time to feel the warmth of Molly’s waist beneath him and choke down an unhelpful noise before his friend grabbed the doorframe and hauled himself back to his feet. 

Molly straightened his coat rather ungracefully before offering Caleb a lopsided grin. “I really should stop leaning on door that swing inwards, shouldn’t I?”

“Well, you are only five, we shouldn’t expect so much of you,” Caleb replied, feeling the corner of his mouth twitch.

“Oooh, he’s an academic  _ and  _ has a sense of humour,” Molly laughed, leading them both down the stairs and passing Nott and Beau in the tavern. “How has no one stolen you away from us?”

“Those bard-bandits, or whatever they call themselves—”

“—bardits, I believe—”   

“—yes, they certainly tried their best.”

“I think their reasoning was a little more, ‘this man has been intimidating us for years and we’re finally almost powerful to maybe defeat him if we get lucky’ and less, ‘by the Moonweaver, he’s smart and funny and gorgeous and I want him now’,” Molly said as he and Caleb stepped out the door and began walking downtown. 

Caleb snorted. “The day anyone calls me gorgeous and isn’t selling something is the day I give up and willingly go join the bardits.” 

He grinned, looking at Molly and waiting for him to laugh along with him. Curiously, however, Molly’s eyes, locked onto his face, were distant and a little sad, and the smile he returned was perhaps a little bittersweet as they continued on down the road.

Molly had been right. It was indeed an unseasonably warm day, and though the clouds above them did provide some cover Caleb quickly began to regret bringing his coat. There was a mugginess to the air that had Caleb longing for the temperate summers and dry winters of his youth, and the feeling the beads of sweat on the back of his neck clinging to his hair was starting to grate on him. 

Molly didn’t seem to be enjoying it either, if the way he was constantly adjusting his shirt was any indicator, and the lighthearted mood from up at the inn was starting to drain away as they both began to appreciate just how far away the bookshop was. And, if Caleb was being honest, there was something else between them as well—a kind of tension that only arose when one party was trying to figure out how to talk about something neither wanted to discuss. 

After maybe five minutes, Molly tried breaking the thick silence between them.

“So what’s the new experiment, Mister Caleb?” he asked, oddly nervous, though as jovial as could be given he immediately wiped the sweat off his brow. Caleb stared at the way the individual curls of Molly’s purple hair, nearly black with moisture, stuck to his forehead, and tried to bully this thoughts into a coherent sentence.

“Uh,” he said instead, “I’m using the beacon for, um. Well, a few things. Mostly to do with—” how could he explain this in a way Molly wouldn’t question him about “—quantum...things. And, um. The relationship between space and time. Very boring, very complicated. It requires a great deal of reading and deciphering old research, and mathematical equations, and so on. I’m quite glad to be out of the room, truthfully, it was getting a little dull.”

Molly, unfortunately, narrowed his eyes. “Time travel sounds rather fascinating, actually.”

Well, shit.

Caleb looked to the road ahead, refusing to meet Molly’s eyes. “It isn’t—it’s not just that. There are many possible uses for—”

“—cut the crap, Caleb, Nott told me what you’re trying to do.”

Now this  _ did  _ catch Caleb’s attention. “And what did Nott say, exactly?”

Molly held his gaze, slowing to a standstill on the edge of a market square. Clearly, Caleb thought, this was the real reason Molly and Beau had wanted him to come talk with them; they wanted to figure out what Caleb was doing in his little hideaway. 

It only surprised him a little that Nott had revealed—well, some part of—his plans. In the six months since she’d been successfully returned to her original state, Nott’s patience for some of Caleb’s more destructive ideas had weakened, just as her trust in the others had grown.

“She said,” Molly began, “that you want to use the beacon to go back before your parents were killed and stop that from happening. And that you were using some pretty powerful magic, that’s nearly gotten all of us killed  _ multiple times _ , by the way, to do it.” 

It was like all the breeze in the marketplace had died at once. Caleb hadn’t felt this exposed, this frozen in place, in years, but in this moment he could feel the humid air stick to his face, stick to his lungs, stopping him from breathing and moving and doing anything. 

He stared at Molly, not quite meeting his burning eyes, and let his mouth open and close a few times before whispering, “Before my parent  _ were killed _ ?”

Molly didn’t reply, only furrowing his beautiful eyebrows in confusion. 

Caleb blinked at him. “Mollymauk, I  _ murdered  _ them. That is—that’s—I don’t know how— _ I  _ am the one that killed them. That is unforgivable, there is no—yes, I am trying to find a way to turn back the clock, but I am not—Molly, there is no other option.”

“No other option except abandoning us?” Molly asked, crossing his arms.

“I would hardly say I’m  _ abandoning _ you, it’s not as if you won’t be better off—”

“—don’t you  _ dare  _ finish that—”

“—better off without me. There’s very little I can do that Jester or Caduceus or Fjord can’t replicate, and I’m sure you will all benefit from not having my catatonic  _ arsch  _ to take care of after every time an enemy burns,  _ and _ —” Caleb said the last word a little louder as Molly opened his mouth to protest.

“— _ and,  _ no one will get hurt trying to stand between myself and a monster,” he finished, gaze creeping upwards to meet Molly’s. Caleb immediately wished he could look away, but he was stuck staring into shining red eyes, narrowed in anger and uncertainty.

They were both silent for a moment before Molly took a very deep breath and began, in a voice that told Caleb he was trying very hard not to cry from anger, “Do you really think that making sure the Mighty Nein never exists is going to make our lives better?”

Caleb blinked at him, confused. “Pardon?”

Another deep, shuddery breath. “If you go through with this—this  _ nightmare  _ of a plan. If you fuck around with time magic and make it so that your parents are saved and you never go to the asylum. The Mighty Nein. Will never. Come into… into existence. We won’t ever meet together at that tavern in Trostenwald. We won’t ever fight Kylre at the circus. We won’t—gods, even if by some miracle we  _ do  _ meet, we won’t have our name. We won’t have our wizard, or our rogue, probably.” 

He closed his eyes, and continued. “Even if you fucking around with the past doesn’t have weird, unexpected butterfly effects, we can’t—we can’t  _ be a group  _ without you. Beau and I would probably be in jail, so would Nott, Yasha would be living wild, Jester and Fjord would have gone to the Solstryce Academy, and Caduceus...would, actually, probably still be running his graveyard tea shop, but that’s not the point. We’d—fuck.”

Molly cut himself off, opening his eyes and looking up, and Caleb could see the gathering clouds reflected in his eyes. It would have been stunning if Molly wasn’t so clearly trying to blink back tears.

“Our lives would be immeasurably worse without you, Caleb, and I don’t—I can’t—it doesn’t make any sense to me at all that after all the good we’ve done you still feel like you need to erase it all to fix  _ one  _ mistake, that you were  _ coerced  _ into making, as a  _ child _ .”  

Just as Molly finished talking, slowly blinking back towards looking at Caleb, the clouds above them opened up and it began to drizzle. Neither Caleb nor Molly paid it any heed.

“It’s my family.” Caleb said, hating himself more than ever. He’d planned on keeping this from everyone, not even saying goodbye, but no. The one person Caleb couldn’t bear to disappoint was close to tears in front of him, and all Caleb had to offer was a mantra of an explanation he wasn’t sure he believed any more.

“It’s my family,” he repeated, “and I murdered them. That’s all that matters. I can’t—I can’t be forgiven for that. So I have to change it.” 

Even though, Caleb thought, I would sell my soul to any number of gods to be able to stay here with you. 

“Aren’t we your family?” Molly asked, wiping a little of the rain off his face. The shaky sadness from moments earlier was fading away, replaced by a kind of hard determination that made Caleb’s heart ache. “Doesn’t this thing we have going, this mercenary group or adventuring party or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t this feel like a family to you? Because it sure as fuck does to me, and to Beau and to Nott, and Yasha and Fjord and Jester and Caduceus and goddamn Frumpkin too, probably. And I know they were—”

“—are—”

“—your parents, but doesn’t this—doesn’t this count for anything? You  _ have  _ a family that’s still alive, one who chose you and wants you here and doesn’t know why the fuck you’re too selfish to actually look around you and see that there’s people that love you  _ here _ —” 

“ _ Molly. _ ”

“—don’t ‘Molly’ me, Caleb, it’s true. This whole seeking forgiveness from the universe shit is never going to pay off, and we know it, and I think you know it too. I think, very deep down in your bruised fucking heart, you understand that the only person who can ever offer you forgiveness for this is  _ you _ , Caleb. This is,” he let out a frustrated huff, “I don’t know. I’ve tried to understand what you’re doing, and I think I do, but Caleb—I—I’m begging you here.”

Molly took a step closer, once again catching eye contact with Caleb and putting all two inches of his height advantage to use as he stared down the wizard. “Changing one awful thing in your past is not worth destroying every other good deed you’ve ever done. It’s not worth, fucking, ruining seven people’s lives.  _ Please,  _ just—” he broke off, imploring Caleb to listen to what he’d just said.

And the problem was that Caleb  _ was  _ listening. He heard everything that Molly was saying to him, everything that echoed the thoughts that had been nagging him in the past few weeks, telling him he’s wrong and to reconsider, and to give in to what he wants. 

But the Ikithon that lived in the back of Caleb’s brain already knew exactly what to remind him of, exactly how to take the words  _ forgiveness  _ and  _ your fault  _ and  _ selfish  _ and nail them to the front of his mind so that they clouded every thought, every decision. So that no matter how much sense Molly was making, how altruistic and selfless he made staying with the Nein sound, Caleb couldn’t, wouldn’t  _ truly  _ believe he had a choice. He didn’t even have a future.

“What happened to letting people make their own mistakes? Letting them ruin their own lives if they were foolish enough to want to?” Caleb asked, after far too long a beat spent staring into Molly’s eyes, trying to tell him without telling him that Caleb was too far gone. The rain was heavier now, plastering Caleb’s hair to his skull.

Molly looked away and kicked a loose cobblestone. “Yeah well,” he said in a thick voice, tears streaming freely alongside the raindrops on his face, “I don’t think that really applies when the selfish bastard I’m in love with is doing his best to make sure we never even meet—” 

He clicked his jaw shut, a dark blush blooming across his cheeks as Caleb stared at him, wide eyed and gaping. Molly didn’t meet his gaze, still fixed on the stone ground beneath them.

Neither of them did anything for nearly a minute, both frozen in that strange moment in between comprehending and understanding. And eventually— 

“Did you mean to say that?” Caleb asked, as soft and gentle as he could physically manage.

Molly laughed, once, and the sound was so desperately unhappy that Caleb imagined he could feel his own heart breaking. “I didn’t mean to admit that, no, but. Um. I do love you. Quite a lot, actually.”

He shivered, and only then did Caleb actually take in the fact that he and Molly were still standing in what was now fairly steady rain. Molly’s thin white shirt was soaked through completely—and despite the gravity of the situation Caleb couldn’t very well stop himself from  _ seeing _ , could he?—and as he’d left that awful multicoloured coat at the inn, he was now shaking rather violently. Caleb quickly shrugged off his coat and tried to drape it across Molly’s shoulders.

“I don’t— _ achoo _ —I don’t want your pity coat, Caleb.”

“It’s not a pity coat, I just don’t want you to die any time soon.” Caleb replied, offering up the smallest of smiles as a kind of peace offering. 

Molly sneezed and gave a watery smile in return. “I’m sorry for calling you a selfish bastard, by the way. It was a little hypocritical, even for me.”

The air that had disappeared from Caleb’s lungs seemed to rush back all at once as he felt as if a ball of soft morning sunlight was expanding in his ribcage. Every fond, tender memory Caleb had spent the past few weeks—if he’s being honest, the past year—ignoring came back to him at once, the lock he’d been keeping on them broken beyond repair. 

This was—it might be—it could be—Molly—     

“Hypocritical?” Caleb breathed, trying to calm the seventeen thousand thoughts that were eating their way through his brain.

Molly shrugged, holding Caleb’s coat a little tighter. “I mean, you  _ are  _ being monumentally selfish by trying to change everything about our lives to fix one of your mistakes, but. Maybe it’s a little selfish of me to ask you to stay, when I—when I want you to stay with  _ me _ , not just with the Nein. I want—fuck, I shouldn’t say it. Caleb, it’s your choice whether to leave or not, you’re right, but you have to realise that if you do you’re going to hurt me—us—badly.”  

Caleb took a step closer, feeling the cold rain drip down his own back through his shirt and sweater. Molly still wasn’t looking at him, but Caleb could feel his shaking breath and the warmth of his hot-blooded body through Caleb’s own coat.

“What do you want?” he asked, almost afraid of how light his ribs were feeling.

Molly sniffled, and, so quietly Caleb had to lean the slightest bit closer, said, “I want you to stay and be here with us, and help us fight dragons and giants and bureaucrats, and I want you to be here when Beau and Jester finally get their shit together, and I want you to teach Luke Brenatto how to do magic, and I want you to love me back but I know I can’t ask you to—”

_ Ask me, _ Caleb thought.  _ Please, gods, ask me. Ask me a question that will drown out the Ikithon in the back of my head. Ask me a question that I can hold on to. _

Molly stopped talking as Caleb brought his hands to cup his face, gently as he could, tilting Molly’s wonderfully delicate jaw up so that their eyes could meet again. 

“Ask me,” Caleb whispered. “Ask me to stay.”

“I’m not going to ask you to do anything, Caleb. You have to—you have to chose it for yourself. What do  _ you  _ want?” 

It was Caleb’s turn to pause, as the hurricane of wants and weaknesses inside his mind, and the breathtaking lightness in his lungs threatened to overwhelm him. It was the feeling of—if he was being honest with himself—pure relief; relief that he could  _ say  _ the thoughts that had been worming their way though his mind for weeks. Relief that they might not be hopeless daydreams after all, that some of those memories and imaginings might mean as much to Molly as they did to him. Relief that as lost and confused as he felt, battling between his impulses, he wasn’t alone.

“I want,” he began, slowly, looking just below Molly’s left eye, where a spot of his eye makeup had streaked gold across his face, “I want to stay here, and be with you all, and help you fight dragons and giants and bureaucrats. I want to see Beau and Jester realise they’re in love. I want to teach Luke Brenatto how to summon his own familiar. And I want—”

The line of wet gold ran further down Molly’s face. Caleb felt Molly smile beneath his cold wet fingers, and, well.

What else could he do but kiss him?

Caleb’s mouth had to have been cold as icicles from the rain, which had by now melted into a drizzle, but Molly kissed him back at once. Caleb wasn’t sure if the warmth growing in his bones was from the feeling of those— _ divine, warm, gentle _ —lips on his own, or from the taloned hands that now held the back of his neck, or the tail wrapping itself around Caleb’s ankle, but it was a feeling Caleb knew that the Ikithon in his mind could never hope to compete with.

This wasn’t forgiveness, or erasure, or any kind of benediction. 

It was far, far, better.

Against Molly’s smiling mouth, Caleb whispered, “—I want to tell you that I love you too. And I—I want to stay.”  

“Well,” Molly said, not moving his hand from where it was clinging onto Caleb’s neck, “as much as I love you for saying that—and I most certainly do—what do you think about staying somewhere a little warmer?”

Caleb blinked at him. 

“I confess my feelings for you and that’s all you have to say?” he asked, an achingly tender smile splitting his face.

Molly ran his hands down Caleb’s arms and tugged on his wrists, pulling him down the lane. “Darling, I am perfectly happy to listen to you confess your love for me again once we’re marginally drier, and I think I know the perfect place.”

“Is this your imaginary bookshop?”

“Hey! It’s not imaginary, I saw it yesterday.”

“Oh, really? And who runs it, the bardits?”

“Now you’re just being mean.”

And as Caleb followed him down the path, hands held as tight as they could, a few spots of lamp light reflecting off the wet charms in Molly’s horns, Caleb was surprised to find the lightness in his chest—if he was being honest, in his heart—remained. 

He thought to himself:

_ If I stay here with this person that I love, will I one day forgive myself? _

And for the first time in a very long while, it seemed the answer might be  _ yes _ .

**Author's Note:**

> also thanks to Ara for reminding me how good hands cupping face is


End file.
